


Just Another Cage

by WetSammyWinchester



Series: Wincestmas 2016 [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, M/M, POV Outsider, Post-Episode: s12e08 LOTUS, Prison, Sam's hand scar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-14 07:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9167440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WetSammyWinchester/pseuds/WetSammyWinchester
Summary: The worst part about Supermax is the isolation. Especially when you've spent your life no more than fifteen feet away from the person you love.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soy_em](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soy_em/gifts).



Twenty three hours a day in solitary lockdown. Being a prisoner in Supermax means extreme isolation. No matter how tough the inmates think they are, how black their hearts and minds, they aren’t prepared for it. Thick concrete walls muffle screams and cries like you’re buried in a coffin six feet under and there is no way to prepare for that kind of experience.

Whenever new prisoners are dropped off at “The Boot”, the guards on the night shift gather around to exchange money and names. Bets are made on which of these bastards will break first and how long it would take until they are crying like babies in their bunk. After three years as a guard, he knew the look of a man who was about to crack.

When the Winchester brothers were brought in last month, he put his money down on the younger one. The way he hid his face behind that long hair and how his eyes were always looking to his brother for reassurance. Oh yeah, Sweet Sam - as the guards were calling him - was sure to be the first of the two.

Yet, four weeks later and neither brother had cracked yet.

The older one - Dean - had eyes like a lion lying in the tall grass, a predator waiting for his chance to pounce. A lot of prisoners looked that way when they first arrived. If they got the chance, they’d attack and escape, finding some place to run. It was kinda funny in a way because there was no escape from The Boot.

The younger one with his height and muscles should have been the more intimidating one but was quiet and polite. Hell, Sweet Sam even said thank you the first time his dinner of chewy meatloaf and gruel potatoes was pushed through the slot at the bottom of his cell door. Guards were typically spit at, threatened or ignored - no one ever said thank you.

Some of the inmates tried to suck up to the guards in the first few weeks. But not Sam. Sam said please and thank you, and then for the rest of the day, he just sat on his bunk and stared at the wall quietly. His only tell that things weren’t great was the way he rubbed his palm over and over. That little gesture was like watching a lit powder keg and waiting for it to blow.

As the weeks went on, Dean got twitchy. He paced his ten by twenty-foot cell, mumbling to himself about useless demons and goddamn angels. Obviously the guy was a head case, but in this world of “homeland security” and “three strikes”, the government doesn’t care how crazy you are, just that you’re locked away forever.

When Dean’s meals were dropped off, there were no thank yous. Instead, every day he asked the same thing - “How’s my brother?” And every day when he was taken to the yard for his twenty minutes of exercise, Dean would strain to look in the other fenced yard for a glimpse of Sam.

It almost made you feel bad for the two brothers. Almost. You know, if they hadn’t tried to shoot the President.

The day Dean spotted Sam through the chain link you’d have thought Christmas came early the way his face lit up. On the other side of that fence, his brother was walking, shackled at the wrists and ankles. His brown hair was hanging down and he was massaging the palm of his hand again like you would a worry stone.

“SAM!” Dean yelled as he stepped towards the fence. The guard yanked his chains to bring the inmate back in line and that’s when everything went to hell. Dean growled and, despite the shackles, landed an elbow to the guard’s face, breaking his nose and dropping him like a sack of old potatoes in the yard.

There was nowhere to go in that fenced yard but goddamn if Dean didn’t run at the chain link anyway, sticking his fingers through it and calling out to his brother, who finally looked up. That was the first time any emotion crossed Sweet Sam’s face since he came to The Boot, and it hurt to see that kind of longing.

Sam ran to the fence and the brothers touched fingers together. It was only for a few seconds before they were pulled apart.

Dean struggled against the guards, shouting back over his shoulder. “Hilts, we’re getting out of here soon, you hear me? Don’t give up, they’re coming for us.”

Sam nodded right before one of the guards dropped Dean with a punch to the head from his rifle butt and drug him back inside.

Guess those words were prophetic. No one had ever escaped from Supermax before the Winchester brothers arrived. It’s reputation as a sealed vault put fear into the most hardened criminal. And yet these two brothers managed to do the impossible.

No one could figure out how the two of them were able to get out of a locked room with their lawyer, some dark-haired guy with a wrinkled suit and trench coat. Security footage was blank, the film overexposed. The warden questioned every guard twice to see if there were any discrepancies in their security, but nothing.

Just an empty room, a locked door, and two missing prisoners.


End file.
